Aim Biogeography and macroecology aim to understand the processes that determine patterns in nature. In the marine environment, most of what we know has been documented for fish and macrobenthic organisms. As a result, this knowledge is negatively biased towards smaller benthic organisms, including meiofauna. In this study, we analysed the occurrence of species from the phylum Kinorhyncha, a meiobenthic group with presumably l...

Aethozoid ctenostome bryozoans are an unusual, small group of solitary ctenostome bryozoans, occurring almost exclusively in deep-sea habitats. Currently, there are only five species belonging to four, still insufficiently known genera, which have been reported from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Recent examination of sediment core samples from an active volcanic area near Mayotte revealed a high abundance of aethozoids, rec...

Polymetallic nodule fields represent a large reservoir of undiscovered biodiversity that becomes particularly evident for meiobenthic organisms, the smallest-sized faunal group. Knowledge gaps are especially noticeable for the generally low-density metazoan groups, such as Kinorhyncha, the so-called mud dragons. Using both morphological and genetic (metabarcoding) approaches, we provide a general overview and comparison of the...